Freckles
by dancing in daydreams
Summary: Upset after a fight with her brother, Éowyn hides in the stables. Luckily, her cousin Théodred knows all of her favourite hiding spots.


Éowyn ran out of the hall, down the stairs and into the stables. She ran past the tack room, her uncle's horse and all the other horses. Her pony Maedstorm stretched out his head and snorted when she stormed past him, but for once, she ignored him. Instead, she climbed up the ladder to the hayloft and sat down by the hatch, making sure nobody would be able to spot her from the little paddock behind the stables. Still shaking with anger, Éowyn wrapped her arms around her knees and thought about how much she hated her brother right now.

She had merely asked Éomer to practice sword fighting with her. Alright, maybe she had asked him again and again and that while he was together with Ceadda and Leofric. Éomer always hated it when she wanted to play with him when his friends were around. But this time, she had wanted to train, not play.

How could he be so mean and say that he didn't want to train with somebody who was as weirdly freckled as her? And her freckles didn't even look strange or disgusting, or at least Éowyn hadn't thought so until now. When she was little, her mother had always quietly counted her freckles until Éowyn fell asleep. After all, she didn't want a single freckle to get lost, she always said. And her mother had also had freckles, quite a few more than Éowyn did, for that matter. So how could Éomer claim that freckles were disgusting?

Angry tears shot into Éowyn's eyes again. She clenched her fist and punched the bale of straw next to her. She had bloodied Éomer's nose even though she knew that her uncle would be angry with her. Although he let her take sword fighting lessons so that she, as he said, would learn to control herself and her temper, he expected her to be well-behaved otherwise. It wasn't fair: Éomer had been so mean to her and now she would be in trouble because she had lost her temper.

"Éowyn? Why don't you come down and tell me what happened?"

Éowyn peered through the hatch. Her cousin Théodred was standing on the paddock and looking up at her.

"How did you know where I was?"

Théodred shrugged and grinned. "I know you too well. But it's nice to see you are not quite as battered as Éomer."

Éowyn's expression darkened. "He deserved it!"

"I thought you'd be involved in this somehow. I met Éomer as he was washing the blood from his face and he didn't want to tell me what had happened. If he had just collided unhappily with one of his friends during practice, he would have told me so. So what did he do to earn your wrath?"

Éowyn told him what had happened. "And that's why I got angry and bloodied his nose. I know I shouldn't have, but it just happened."

Théodred shook his head. "He is making fun of your freckles? That is ridiculous. As you know, your uncle also has freckles."

"Well yes, but not as many as I do," Éowyn replied. "And of course, nobody dares to say anything about his freckles."

"That's because there is nothing to say against them. Freckles aren't anything bad, quite the contrary. I always wanted to have some when I was a child. Sometimes I even tried to give myself a few." He stooped, grabbed a handful of mud from the ground and flicked some of it across his face.

Éowyn laughed and jumped from the hatch onto one of the bales of hay on the paddock. "Your freckles really are slightly disgusting," she said as Théodred helped her down from the bale of hay. "And they smell of horse manure."

"It never really did convince anybody," Théodred conceded. "I was always just asked to wash my face. But whoever takes issue with real freckles is beyond help. You probably should still apologise to your brother though. After all, it would be a shame if you fell out over this."

Éowyn hesitated and then had to grin. "Alright, but only if you keep your freckles for the feast tonight."

Théodred grimaced but had to laugh as well. "I'm sure my father will be thrilled. But fine, I'll do it. And woe betide anyone who dare mock our freckles!"


End file.
